Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
volume of sales made or business done by the enterprise that owns the farm is not
less than $500,000 . . . and the enterprise employs workers engaged in commerce,
or the production of goods for commerce” (DOL, 2004).
Roughly one-fourth of U.S. farms (27 percent) directly hire farm laborers, but
only one-ninth (11 percent) of farms with hired-labor expenses (60,646 of 554,434
farms) had cash receipts from the sale of agricultural commodities amounting to
$500,000 or more in 2002 (USDA, 2004). An additional but unknown number of
farm operators rely on indirectly hired farm laborers, described as contract labor,
usually through a labor-market intermediary, such as a farm labor contractor.
Thus, at least 89 percent of farms with hired or contract laborers are exempted
from FLSA regulation by the farm-sales size limitation. However, farms subject to
federal regulation account for over two-thirds (71 percent) of all direct-hire farm-
labor payroll. It is not known what fraction of all hired and contract laborers are
employed on farms that are exempted.
Much of the basis of exempting smaller-scale farming businesses from FLSA
and OSHA regulation was originally motivated by an interest among policymakers
not to unduly burden farms that were, at least in 1938, the major source of Ameri-
can food production. But the dominance of American agriculture by small farms
has long since passed. According to the 2002 Census of Agriculture, if all farms are
ranked in descending order by size of cash receipts from sales of agricultural com-
modities, the largest 6.7 percent of all American farms accounted for 75 percent
of all farm sales. The 1987 Census of Agriculture reported that the largest 13.3
percent of all farms accounted for 75 percent of farm sales. Thus, size concentra-
tion in American agriculture has roughly doubled in just 15 years. Clearly, small
farms have become less and less important.
STATUTORY EXEMPTIONS OF CHILD LABOR
FROM THE FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT
Despite the clear delineation of which farms are subject to federal regulation,
there are numerous additional statutory exemptions of various categories of hired
farm workers from the protections of the FLSA (DOL, 2007a). Exemptions from
the FLSA for agricultural workers include allowing children 14 and 15 years old to
be employed for unlimited periods outside local school hours. Similarly, “minors
who are at least 16 years of age may perform any farm job, including agricultural
occupations declared hazardous by the Secretary of Labor, at any time, including
during school hours” (DOL, 2007a).
Minors under 14 years old may also work in agriculture under any of the fol-
lowing statutory exemptions from the child labor provisions of the FLSA:
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